Fear
From what I can remember, there was a faint tinge of dry wood and moist stagnant soil in the atmosphere. The evening sky was a dark blanket with tie-dye colors of quickly fading gold, fuchsia, and violet at its western edge.
The transitioning panorama vaguely reminded me of a line from the 19th century poem ‘Excelsior’, which my grandmother used to recite over and over. “The shades of night are falling fast…” I wondered if this is what she was pertaining to.
As the sun finally sank below the horizon, I strangely felt as though my guardian angel had vanished with it, and that is when it all began. I felt a chilling breeze graze my cheek, as if death had blown a kiss at me.
Slowly, but surely, I turned in the direction of the calm, yet eerie wind. That’s when I saw her.
A little girl, about half my height, was standing across from me; head cocked slightly to the side, and half her body blocked by a thick vertical silhouette.
She had flowing hair as black as the grim reaper’s cloak, and her ashen skin glowed in the dimness as if she had been rolling around in flour for hours.
My mouth slowly gaped as my eyes widened. I wanted to scream, but my throat was locked. I wanted to swear, but my voice seemed to be trapped in a temporal stasis. In less than the blink of an eye, her entire body shifted from where it was, and she was completely in view. Her bulging eyes seemed glassy and lifeless, and somehow, slowly, ever so slowly, the corners of her lips curled into a smile, as I heard a soft, hollow giggle.
My muscles tightened, I think, and my heartbeat seemed to quicken. I staggered back a bit when I really peered into those dark abysses she had for eyes; black and endless, I could feel them sucking me in… luring me to my demise.
Everything seemed wrong at that point. I turned around and ran full force in the opposite direction. I could hear myself panting between loud swears. The words seemed a little muddled - I guess, out of fear or whatever.
I heard her weak giggle again creeping behind me. I could hear her footsteps running behind my staggering ones, crunching on the ground. Too afraid to glimpse behind me, I kept my eyes ahead, when all of a sudden, I saw monsters; deciduous monsters shifting and dancing around me. Their faces were old and etched on. Soon, fireflies joined them in their disdainful merriment at the expense of my sanity laughing and having a good time.
I thought I was going insane. It already felt like my legs were led or made of stone. Still, I relentlessly sped ahead with all I had. And even so, I couldn’t figure out what was racing faster, my heart or my legs.
I could still see the creatures prancing around, hear the giggling, the wildly whipping wind, and the miniscule laughing. Everything seemed like a dream, but somehow, I had the slightest inkling that it wasn’t… I knew I was wide awake.
I could feel the girl’s presence. She was close. Close enough to breathe on my back and send shivers –not down – but up my spine - climbing like a staircase.
Amongst the shifting creatures, I could make out a clearing between the monsters - like a radiance at the end of a tunnel - my light of hope in the overwhelming darkness.
As I got closer to the clearing which seemed like freedom from a nightmarish atmosphere, the monsters got more aggressive; scraping my skin with their sharp, skinny, needle-like claws, enough to draw blood.
As I got closer and closer, I could feel the girl even closer than ever before. It seemed that she had even grown in stature.
Her breath on my neck was like a gust of wind on a freezing winter’s eve. The hair on my goose bumps stood on end and it felt like the circulation in that area was cut off. There was a strangely alternate sensation given off saying: “you can run, but you can’t hide”.
As I finally reached the clearing, the crunching sound now dissipated, and was replaced by soft earth.
The wooden cabins were there, the flagpole erect, the campfire improperly quenched, and the camp empty.
For a split second, I remembered that everyone else had gone out for movie night, while I had intended to explore the woods today with my new right-hand man, Jack Daniels, and some of his other associates.
As I ran up the stairs to my cabin door, I, for some reason, felt safer. I didn’t feel the girl’s presence any longer, and the night air carried the song of crickets.
I waited for the rest of my body to calm down, and then slowly turned around to find nothing behind me of what I thought I had seen earlier. No shifting deciduous monsters with needle-like claws, just unwavering trees with all their dried leaves lying on the ground. No dancing fireflies, just the stationary stars in the sky shining extra bright tonight. Even the wind was barely audible.
I stood there on the pavilion of the cabin and stared into the night. I grew angry to the point where my blood seemed to seethe, but then became flustered looking at the actuality of it all.
‘Damn’, I thought. ‘How could this have happened?’
The questions and possibilities were looming in the back of my head. ‘Were the other campers playing a trick on me? It was possible, they were cruel enough.’ ‘Did I drink a tad too much today? That would explain the staggering and muddled words’ ‘Was I dreaming and sleep walking at the same time? That would explain the creatures and things I heard.’ ‘Hallucinating? ...Nah, couldn’t be.’ The results were just going and coming back and forth like the ball in the finals of a ping-pong tournament.
Just then, I looked down at the trail I left behind from when the dried leaves of the trees in the woods transitioned into moist earth of the camp territory. There was my trail of footprints… along with someone else’s leading up to where the stairs began.
A sudden jolt hit me, and my heart pace quickened again. I felt a familiar tingling feeling make its way up my spine, and heard a faint giggle behind me once more…
It was then that the only time in my life, the feelings I couldn’t extrapolate, could have been summed up in one word: “Fear”.